Thankfully we were notified by Miki that it was due to screen and tried to put the word out amongst our followers in France far & wide to gain more interest!

It’s coming up to Christmas, people are out shopping, chocolate is piled high in all the shops … most of the chocolate on offer is the type that we know is coming from ‘unknown’ sources; i.e. you just can’t be sure if trafficked children have been involved with its production.

Interestingly we’ve been looking at ‘Fair Trade’ chocolate here in France. ‘Chocolat Equitable’ is usually in a bar/tablet form in shops and becoming increasingly popular with many shoppers, despite the premium price. However, following discussions with friends and colleagues, it seems that they buy it because they know that there’s no involvement of child labour.

We’re very happy with that; people are becoming more & more aware of the cocoa industry!

But when you examine it a little closer, this chocolate does adhere to fair trade because most of it comes from the Dominican Republic or Peru etc. There’s seems to be very little involvement of sourcing cocoa in West Africa.

So to skirt around the problem of child trafficking and child labour, they’ve diverted away from Africa to buy cocoa from countries where the situation doesn’t exist (as far as we know). In the “Shady Chocolate” film last night, Miki went to investigate the fair trade situation in Ghana.

We’re not against fair trade if it’s truly ‘fair’ http://fairreporters.net/2012/11/14/the-fairtrade-rip-off/ , but looking at the bigger picture by companies such as Alter Eco & Kaoka in France. Are their efforts of sourcing cocoa in places such as Peru, Dominican Republic & Ecuador to name a few, going to go against the cocoa planters in W.Africa who desperately need investment & pricing parity to enable them to invest in their farms & without child labour?

Isn’t it like burying your head in the sand if all fair trade cocoa purchasing is carried out away from the problems we know exist in West Africa?